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Concentrated colloidal suspensions are a well-tested model system which has a glass transition. Colloids are suspensions of small solid particles in a liquid, and exhibit glassy behavior when the particle concentration is high; the…
The molasses tail in dense hard core fluids is investigated by extensive event-driven molecular dynamics simulation through the orientational autocorrelation functions. Near the fluid-solid phase transition, there exist three regimes in the…
We experimentally study the crystallization of a monolayer of vibrated discs with a built-in polar asymmetry, a model system of active liquids, and contrast it with that of vibrated isotropic discs. Increasing the packing fraction $\phi$,…
The reformulation of the mode-coupling theory (MCT) of the liquid-glass transition which incorporates the element of metastability is applied to the hard-sphere system. It is shown that the glass transition in this system is not a sharp one…
We investigate the response of a system of hard spheres to two classes of perturbations over a range of densities spanning the fluid, crystalline, and glassy regimes within a molecular dynamics framework. Firstly, we consider the relaxation…
The behavior of identical particles interacting through the harmonic-repulsive pair potential has been studied in 3D using molecular dynamics simulations at a number of different densities. We found that at many densities, as the…
This thesis can be divided into two independent parts. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on studying the kinetic pathways of nucleation in colloidal systems. In Chapter 2, we briefly introduce the relevant theory of nucleation,…
Nucleation in the supercooled Yukawa system is relevant for addressing current challenges in understanding a range of crystallizing systems including white dwarf (WD) stars. We use both brute force and seeded molecular dynamics simulations…
We investigate the formation of cluster crystals with multiply occupied lattice sites on a spherical surface in systems of ultra-soft particles interacting via repulsive, bounded pair potentials. Not all interactions of this kind lead to…
Crystallization in a dense suspension of anisotropic spherical colloidal particles with a Yukawa potential is numerically investigated in a two-dimensional plane. It is found that a strong anisotropy can hinder the particles from…
Understanding polymorph selection in atomic and molecular systems and its control through thermodynamic conditions and external factors (such as seed characteristics) is fundamental to the design of targeted materials and holds great…
Crucial to gaining control over crystallisation in multicomponent materials or accurately modelling rheological behaviour of magma flows is to understand the mechanisms by which crystal nuclei form. The microscopic nature of such nuclei,…
We have carried out computer simulations of overcompressed suspensions of hard monodisperse ellipsoids and observed their crystallization dynamics. The system was compressed very rapidly in order to reach the regime of slow, glass-like…
We studied the phase behavior of charged and sterically stabilized colloids using confocal microscopy in a less polar solvent (dielectric constant 5.4). Upon increasing the colloid volume fraction we found a transition from a fluid to a…
We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations results for dense fluids of ultrasoft, fully-penetrable particles. These are a binary mixture and a polydisperse system of particles interacting via the generalized exponential model, which is…
Unstable systems of fluidized grains in a very-narrow vertical tube can auto-defluidize after some time, the settling particles forming either a glass- or crystal-like structure. We carried out experiments using different polymer spheres,…
Confinement can have a considerable effect on the behavior of particle systems, and is therefore an effective way to discover new phenomena. A notable example is a system of identical bosons at low temperature under an external field…
As a model for a suspension of hard-sphere like colloidal particles where small nonadsorbing dissolved polymers create a depletion attraction, we introduce an effective colloid-colloid potential closely related to the Asakura-Oosawa model…
We explore structural and dynamical behavior of concentrated colloidal suspensions made up by C-shape particles using Brownian dynamics computer simulations and theory. In particular, we focus on the entanglement process between nearby…
We use numerical simulations to study the crystallization of monodisperse systems of hard aspherical particles. We find that particle shape and crystallizability can be easily related to each other when particles are characterized in terms…